~ the great escape from every day life

let sleeping dogs lie…

… although I think my dog would really like to spend all his time sleeping on my bed or sofa, I make that difficult for him with obstacles, and try and encourage him to use his own bed…

… he is a reasonably large dog, and needs a pretty big bed… and he likes to be close to his humans, so his bed always ends up being a focal point in the apartment…

… there are few shop bought beds that I really want sitting in the middle of my living room, so many have hideous cartoon characters printed all over them, or the ubiquitous paw print… no thanks! I have almost always made his beds.

… last winter I decided the bean bag filler he had been using couldn’t possibly be comfortable: the polystyrene balls shuffled out his way so he ended up lying on the floor surrounded by a ring of stuffing. I decided to change his bed filling and set out in search of some good sturdy foam. I knew exactly where I would have been able to find what I was looking for in Lisbon, but that is 2000 km away, so I asked at a few places and eventually my favourite fabric shop told me about Anno….

… I cycled 3 times round the neighbourhood before I noticed the discreet plaque by the door of a nondescript town house. I rang the doorbell, was let into a scene from the 80s, velvet carpeting, plastic potted palms and a good layer of faded dust on everything. A gentlemen appeared from a back room, took my order, informed me they only accepted cash, so off I went to find a cash machine while he cut my foam.

… back home and despite having taken measurements, the foam didn’t really fit in the old bed cover…

… in ikea looking for something else, and some stripy denim weight fabric caught my eye. I bought a couple of meters, and when I got home decided it was time to launch myself into the world of piping, so off I set to go and find something that matched one of the stripes. A big heavy duty zip – possibly bought as option B for my unfinished Minoru, and I had everything I needed to make a new bed cover…

… rather that my usual envelope approach, this time I decided to go for a box style, piping around the top and bottom…

… I finished it before we moved, but waited until after the move, and after cleaning the apartment countless times before I decided the floor was in an OK shape to get out the new bed.

… I am very happy with it, it looks good, while white hairs do show up (as they do on almost everything!), it doesn’t show the dirt, of which a forest loving dog brings home a lot and T seems to approve…